(a) Field
The present invention relates to a liquid crystal display.
(b) Description of the Related Art
Liquid crystal displays are one of the most common types of flat panel displays currently in use. Liquid crystal displays include two sheets of display panels a liquid crystal layer interposed therebetween. The two sheets of display panels include field generating electrodes, such as a pixel electrode, a common electrode, and the like. The liquid crystal display generates an electric field in the liquid crystal layer by applying voltage to the field generating electrodes. The alignment of liquid crystal molecules of the liquid crystal layer is determined by the generated electric field, thus controlling polarization of incident light so as to display images.
One display panel of the liquid crystal display also includes a switching element connected to each pixel electrode, and a plurality of signal lines such as a gate line and a data line for applying voltage to the pixel electrode by controlling the switching element.
Among the liquid crystal displays, a vertically aligned mode liquid crystal display, in which long axes of liquid crystal molecules are aligned to be vertical to the display panels without applying the electric field, has received attention due to a large contrast and a wide reference viewing angle. Here, the reference viewing angle means a viewing angle or a luminance inversion limit angle between grays having a contrast ratio of 1:10.
In the case of the vertically aligned mode liquid crystal display, in order to provide side visibility that is approximately the same as the front visibility, a method of varying transmittance is proposed in which one pixel is divided into two subpixels and different voltages are applied to the two subpixels. However, as such, in the case of providing the side visibility that is approximately the same as the front visibility by dividing one pixel into two subpixels and varying the transmittance, luminance is increased at a low gray or a high gray, a gray expression at the side is difficult, and as a result, there is a problem in that image quality deteriorates.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known to a person of ordinary skill in the art.